Julie Newmar (meow!) reveals: '60s Batman was a lot more fun

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Do you think that Christopher Nolan's Batman films are truly bloody brilliant but just a tad too dark? Do you miss the "good old days" of the 1960s Batman series, with Adam West as a swinging Batman, when everything looked like a full-on, kitschy, psychedelic drug-induced dream? Do you believe Batman was much more fun back then?

If you do, so does Catwoman herself, actress Julie Newmar.

As you all know, Newmar was not the first actress to play Catwoman back in the 1960s—the honor goes to Lee Meriwether, who first played the beloved and sexy cat burglar in the 1966 film. But Miss Newmar is the one Catwoman fans of the series remember—and love—the most.

It's no wonder, since the actress played the absolutely delicious feline role in 13 memorable episodes—before relinquishing the cat ears and tail to singer-actress Eartha Kitt in 1967—and she's probably been at the center of many a fanboy's dreams.

Now back to our topic. Though Julie Newmar believes Anne Hathaway will be awesome as the new Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, the actress also revealed to HeroComplex that she ''misses the days when Batman fought crime with a wink instead of a scowl.''

"This is what I get from people when they talk to me about the original Catwoman and compare it to the latter ones [Michell Pfeiffer in Batman Returns (1992), Halle Berry in the atrocious Catwoman (2004)]. I think people prefer the more humorous one, the lighter one. People seem to complain that the recent ones are too dark in spirit. But that's what reflects what's going on. That's what film and acting and everything is. ... I don't envy someone that has to play Batman or Catwoman today. It was a heck of a lot more fun when Adam West and I did it."

And you? Do you miss the good old days of seeing villains' lairs at dangerously dizzying 45-degree angles? The eye-popping colors? The ''pows'' and the ''bams''? Do you miss the good old days when our heroes were doing the incredibly fake wallclimbs (these always got us laughing out loud, by the way)?